Glory Hunters
by Mucus Membrane
Summary: The alarming truth behind a certain Australian legend... Rated K  for some ribald comments.


(Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood, or the Predator characters….. Nor in fact the Rainbow Serpent, which is an ancient Aboriginal legend.)

The phone rang. Jack Harkness was awake instantly – not that he ever really slept. Although he was, as far as he knew, the oldest human being on the planet – blessed or, he sometimes thought, cursed with immortality – he seemed to need very little sleep. Mostly he would just lie down and drift, letting faces from the past float before his mind's eye….

As he brought the mobile phone to his ear, Jack felt a certain apprehension. A phone call to Torchwood's leader usually meant trouble.

"Harkness," he growled.

"G'day, Jack. How's it goin' mate?" said a broad Australian accent in his ear.

Jack immediately relaxed and his face split into a grin. The voice belonged to Frank Noonan, an Aussie who had joined Torchwood in London and then been sent back "down under" to open a Torchwood branch in Sydney. "Frank, you old villain! How are you? Hope you're leaving the female kangaroos alone. The males get very jealous, you know!"

Noonan laughed. "This from a man who knows far more about Welsh sheep than it's healthy to know! Oh – what time is it there? I hope I'm not ringing at an inconvenient hour."

In fact it was five o'clock in the morning in Cardiff, but Jack was not worried. "It's okay, I was already up. So what can I do for you? How's Torchwood Australia going?"

"Good, good. We've got the base almost built – not as fancy as your Hub, but we're making do! And we sorted out the problems with the City Council and the Defence Department, so things are looking pretty good. But look, Jack, why I rang you…."

Jack chuckled. "So it wasn't just to hear my voice?"

"Well, that too, but….. No, I'm thinking of taking a trip into the interior. I've been getting some reports of something strange near Uluru." Frank was referring to the enormous red rock, earlier known as Ayers Rock, which loomed in Australia's central desert, and was now a major tourist attraction.

For some reason Jack started to feel uneasy, his earlier apprehension coming back. "What kind of something strange?" he asked.

"The Aboriginal people have this legend of a creature called the Rainbow Serpent – a god who appears like a snake that shines in all the colours of the rainbow. Of course, everybody thought that's all it was – a legend. But just recently – well, people have started seeing it."

Jack had jumped out of his bed and was now pacing up and down the small room that was his private retreat in the Torchwood Hub. "Seeing it?" he repeated. "You've got eyewitness reports?"

"Oh, yes," said Noonan. "A few days ago a family of German tourists saw it. Unfortunately they were too slow with their cameras. Whatever it is, it moves quickly. But the thing is, we've got more than half a dozen sightings now, and they're all describing the same thing."

"Which is?"

"Something that walks upright like a man, but it can't be seen properly – it seems to change colour and blend in with its surroundings," said Noonan. "One woman said it was like a giant chameleon."

"The Rainbow Serpent," muttered Jack.

"Exactly. So I'm thinking of taking a trip into the desert and checking it out."

"Not on your own!" said Jack.

"But I have to," said Noonan. "There's really nobody I can take. We're still not up to our full complement down here, and the other guys are needed to finish getting our headquarters set up. Look, I can do it by myself."

By now some instinct – an instinct gained over centuries of living dangerously – was definitely ringing alarm bells in Harkness' head. "Frank," he barked, "don't go by yourself. Take someone else with you. Take backup! This could be dangerous."

"Jack, you sound like my mother!" Noonan laughed. "It's probably just some animal that nobody has encountered before. But it needs checking out. I'll be careful, I promise you."

Jack continued to argue, but he could not persuade Noonan to change his mind; and as Noonan was now his equal – the head of Torchwood Australia – he could not give Noonan orders. Finally he ended the call, urging Noonan to call him regularly, and then remained standing, staring into space and thinking.

"Bloody Frank Noonan," Jack thought irritably. "He always was a glory hunter. He's gonna get himself killed one of these days…"

A few days later Frank Noonan was also cursing himself for a fool. He had come into the blazing heat of the Australian desert to find what? A legend?

He had set himself up in a primitive camp in the area where most of the sightings of the "Rainbow Serpent" had occurred. Uluru and other, smaller, rocks and mountains were visible on the horizon, but otherwise the flat, red, dusty Australian desert stretched away around him. Small rocks and tough, wiry plants dotted a landscape which otherwise resembled that of the moon or Mars.

Noonan took a swig of tepid water from a bottle and cursed himself again. His desire to make a name for himself and for the newly founded Australian Torchwood by catching the elusive Rainbow Serpent had brought him out here on what he now realized might well be a fool's errand.

He pulled out his official Torchwood field diary and started to write another entry – an entry that could be paraphrased as, "still nothing!" He thought angrily that he would give it another twenty-four hours, and if he hadn't seen anything by then …

Just then he heard a strange sound. He had already got used to most of the sounds of the Australian desert and this just did not fit in. It sounded like… a chittering, the sound of an animal certainly, but nothing he had heard until now.

He looked around and saw the Rainbow Serpent.

It was crawling towards him, just a few yards away. As the witnesses had said, it was very difficult to see; it seemed to pick up and reflect the colours around it (mostly the red of the desert dust).

It seemed to realize that Noonan had seen it. And it stood up.

Noonan felt the beginnings of absolute terror as he saw how big it was – bigger than a man, possibly seven feet tall. Despite the strange reflective effect, he could see massive, obviously well muscled arms and legs, a huge torso, and an equally huge head looking threateningly in his direction.

And then the worst thing of all happened.

There was a loud crackling sound and an electric flash, and suddenly he could see the thing clearly. Whatever camouflage device it had was obviously malfunctioning, Noonan realized.

Then he stared in total disbelief at what was revealed: the massive body with a hint of reptilian scales; the head topped by what looked incongruously like dreadlocks; the belt containing various weapons, and also skulls – obviously the skulls of its previous victims.

"It's…. a hunter," Noonan said to himself with some small part of his brain that still managed to remain impartial.

Then the creature made an almost casual gesture, and Noonan was looking down at an enormous spear sticking out of his chest. Strangely, it seemed hardly to hurt at all; he just felt everything going numb…

"I found the Rainbow Serpent," Noonan thought wryly. "And he found me!"

Then everything went dark.

The young Predator proudly placed the skull of Frank Noonan alongside the others in his collection.

He had made a few mistakes when he first arrived, and probably been seen by a few of the local life-forms who had lived to tell the tale, but his confidence, and his expertise, was growing. And now he had the skull of his first full-grown male Human!

Well, now he'd show the rest of his clan! Some of them had said he was too young – should wait until he was more experienced – to go hunting alone on the planet of the Humans. They had said he was too eager – that he was a glory hunter, and that he would get himself killed one of these days taking unnecessary risks. But he had proved them wrong.

He patted the skull of Frank Noonan almost affectionately, and then went off to radio the mother ship to inform them of his success.


End file.
